A door opened in the back of the office and another man stuck his head into the room. He was a black man, white-haired, gold spectacles, rather conservative blue suit and vest: "Sullivan" automatically memorized his features and sent them through his computer to recorders-and-identifi-cation.
"Oh, pardon me," the man said, backing out.
But Sullivan-who was not IRA at all, as Hassan surmised, but was CIA, at least part-time-had already come up with a "make." The man was George Washington Carver Bridge, one of the top scientists on Project Cyclops in the seventies. Now what was a man of that caliber doing skulking about the den of so large and carnivorous a mammal as Hassan i Sabbah X?
"Who was that?" he asked idly.
"One of the boys," Hassan replied carelessly. "Just one of the boys."
But Sullivan went back to his hotel mulling over the perversities and paradoxes of the hashish state, and the ever-maddening question "What is Reality?" for his memory kept insisting that just before the door closed he had noted that the esteemed Dr. Bridge was carrying in his hand the amputated penis of a white man.
WE MIGHT WAKE UP
We mustn't sleep a wink all night, or we might wake up - changed.
–Invasion of the Body Snatchers
After the day in 1968 when he found that he had written a check to the Chicago Peace Action Committee while in an altered state of consciousness, Mountbatten Babbit decided, once and for all, that he would see a psychiatrist.
But not right away. He would fight for self-control first.
He realized that his mental condition was highly illegal. ESP in 1941. Halos and ESP together, after that black kid stole his car. Now he was having blackouts in which he performed abominable acts that might threaten his security clearance and even his bank account. That was absolutely terrifying. Anything that endangered the bank account must be a symptom of the most aggravated psychosis. Yes: He would definitely absolutely irrevocably commit himself to psychiatric counseling.
But not right away. He would fight for self-control first.
One night the Babbits had the Moons from across the street as guests for dinner. Molly Moon, as usual, got Mary Lou into a discussion of the occult. All the usual hocus-pocus and rubbish. She was especially keen on some Neon Bal Loon, a Tibetan monk who had allegedly transferred his consciousness into the mind of an Englishman and was now writing books through the Englishman's mediumship.
"It's just the beginning," Molly enthused. "Our materialism has become a threat to the whole world. Sure, more and more of the great Masters will be taking over Occidental bodies, to bring us their wisdom directly."
Mounty Babbit concentrated on discussing the financing of an antidrug pamphlet with Joe Moon, detective lieutenant on the Evanston police. Even that was disconcerting. "It probably won't do any good," Joe said once, rather bitterly. "The kids don't believe anything we tell them."
The next step into psychosis was unexpected and oddly pleasurable. It occurred in the lunchroom at Weishaupt a few days later. Babbit was pouring sugar into his coffee when he suddenly looked at the sugar dispenser. The simplicity of the design, the one small flap that opened to let the sugar pour, abruptly delighted him. It was as if he had never seen it before.
After that he was noticing more and more things in that heightened vision. One day in the Loop he saw a mother whirl suddenly and slap a whining child. His heart leapt with shock-and then he remembered that this was an everyday occurrence in America. It was as if he had seen it from the perspective of some culture where whining and hitting were not normal communication between parents and children.
He wanted less and less meat in his diet; meat now appeared heavy and hard to digest.
The strangest and most disturbing thing of all was the way Weishaupt Chemicals itself began to change. But everything was the same; he was just seeing with different eyes. The contrast between the executive offices and the workshops was an overwhelming experience. Architecture, coloring, decoration, upkeep-every kind of communication except words themselves said with total clarity "The Masters" and "The Serfs." The typical primate pack hierarchy, unnoticed and taken for granted before.
Strange visions came to him whenever his mind relaxed from financial or scientific problems. He would be in a burning jungle, running from helicopters that caused the burning. Or he would be in a temple with the eye-on-the-pyramid design practicing strange breathing exercises. Once he even had a name-Fed King-and he watched as one of his teachers burned himself to death in protest against the war. He was Fed Xing seeing through the eyes of Mountbatten Babbit.
His monogamy, which he usually succeeded in maintaining fifty-one weeks of the year, was falling apart on him. He worried that Mary Lou would be growing suspicious. Women turned him on constantly, incessantly, tor-mentingly, as in early adolescence. Not all women-just white women. Fed Xing couldn't get enough of them. He couldn't even get enough of any one of them. Even after an orgasm, I would want to start again, rubbing and caressing their moist pussies until they came a second time. This excited me so much that I would often go down and suck them into a third orgasm. Then Fed Xing would ask them to suck him and drift off into aeons of tension and pleasure, glimpsing the temple of the eye-on-the-pyramid, occasionally even coming a second time himself, which hadn't happened since he was in his early twenties.
The homosexual phase almost drove me to suicide. But my ESP (I accepted it now, knowing it was all hallucination of course, but following it blindly, being dragged along by it) was both infallible and specific. Fed Xing picked only men of Babbit's own status and importance; and he was never wrong. Evidently, there were more closet cases in the world than even Kinsey had estimated.
I always took the male role, coming in their mouths, and would reciprocate by no more than masturbating them. Once, when the partner was not merely an executive but a Pentagon official, I started laughing at his moment of ejaculation, losing all control, laughing louder and louder, revealing the psychosis and not caring.
That night I looked at the tree in his yard and knew it was an intelligent being. Not with human intellect, not with the mind of a dog or a rat or a fish even, but with its own life and indwelling consciousness. There was even a scientist in New York measuring the emotional reactions of plants with polygraph equipment. And there it stood, a blue spruce, stranger in structure and more alien in intelligence than any creature in science fiction.
How can we live among so many wonders and not be overwhelmed by the sheer mystery of existence? Mounty Babbit, former atheist, asked himself. Our knowledge is so small, and our conceit is so great…
Then he realized in horror that that was Fed Xing, the Buddhist, thinking.
PARTNERS
Man will never be contented until he conquers death.
–dr. bernard strehler, 1977
When Murphy got into the car Mendoza asked, "Bad news?"
Murphy pulled out into the traffic, carefully.
"It must be bad," Mendoza said, looking at Murphy's face.
They drove. Murphy stared straight ahead.
"Man's your partner," Mendoza said. "He shouldn't hide things from you."
"Malloy," Murphy said, "I got to go see Marty Malloy. Only he's got a new bug up his ass; he only talks to one cop at a time."
"Shit on one at a time. You let him pull that, the next thing happens is he thinks he runs the police force. Marty, a cheap hood like Marty, you never give him an edge. On anything. You know that, Tom. Let them get out of line and all of a sudden you got another Jack Ruby. Guy like that gets an edge, he can't keep his mouth shut, going around telling everybody about his friends the cops. Dropping in to see you at home, you know? When he takes his fall, half the force falls with him."